Amaranth the Underlying Flower

by Bill Nevins

Night-lights and lullabies.
Sweet dreams and flying machines.
We were never the heroes we dreamed,
We are merely the parents we could be.
Imperfect, we live on.
Under darkling or brightening skies,
We see what we see, we know what we know.
Those perfect young lie dead: daughter or son.
We see more young ones march again to the Somme.
We see craven old men pushing guns.
So many brave youth gather in the streets of Santiago, Chile,
And their eyes are shot out by police:
Vet, black-patched like buccaneers, still they march.
As Victor Jara, long thought dead, lives and still sings,
As Salvador Allende still sings, as Chilean jazzman
Quique Cruz triumphantly sings.
We cling to that last glimpse before death stings.
We cherish the fading sight of age, wearing gold star rings.
We don Kevlar and gas-masks, perhaps.
Black-light scopes.  Facebook personas.
Bomb belts.  Leather chaps.
We see war.  We see America sliding towards night.
We see.  As a blinded sniper might,
Raging against the failing light.
Yet, for all our griefs, old lullabies and sorrows,
Our amaranthine children dream bright tomorrows.
As the poet Neruda reminds us,
“Podrán cortar todas las flores, pern no podrán detener
la primavera.”

(“They will be able to cut all the flowers, but they will not be able to stop the spring.”)